When the rich wage war, it’s the poor who die.

And we have done more in the two and a half years that I’ve been in here than the previous 43 Presidents to uphold that principle, whether it’s ending ‚don’t ask, don’t tell,‘ making sure that gay and lesbian partners can visit each other in hospitals, making sure that federal benefits can be provided to same-sex couples.

I think what you’re seeing is a profound recognition on the part of the American people that gays and lesbians and transgender persons are our brothers, our sisters, our children, our cousins, our friends, our co-workers, and that they’ve got to be treated like every other American. And I think that principle will win out.

I hope my own children never have to fight a war.

There is no scriptural basis for segregation.

War settles nothing.

The people made worse off by slavery were those who were enslaved. Their descendants would have been worse off today if born in Africa instead of America. Put differently, the terrible fate of their ancestors benefitted them.

Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.

It’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that there are people who can’t or won’t see what Black Lives Matter is trying to accomplish.

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life.

Could I have but a line a century hence crediting a contribution to the advance of peace, I would yield every honor which has been accorded by war.

Discrimination has a lot of layers that make it tough for minorities to get a leg up.

You can’t say civilization don’t advance… in every war they kill you in a new way.

Africa is a continent in flames. And deep down, if we really accepted that Africans were equal to us, we would all do more to put the fire out. We’re standing around with watering cans, when what we really need is the fire brigade.

White people just don’t want their slaves to be free. That’s the whole thing.

War is a way of shattering to pieces… materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and… too intelligent.

Reactionaries often describe both Marx and Lenin as theorists, without taking into consideration that their utopias inspired Russia and China – the two countries called upon to lead a new world which will allow for human survival if imperialism does not first unleash a criminal, exterminating war.

We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives… inside ourselves.

It has so happened in all ages of the world that some have labored, and others have, without labor, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits.

I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see a black family it says they’re looting, if you see a white family it says they’re looking for food.

I have been working for Africans since I was 18, when I got involved with the Nelson Mandela concerts. I got involved with debt cancellation because Desmond Tutu demanded that the world respond to that situation.

Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country.

You will kill 10 of our men, and we will kill 1 of yours, and in the end it will be you who tire of it.

When you look at how much we spend on social programs in our country, it separates us from a lot of countries. In our country, if you’re hungry, we’ll feed you. If you’re homeless, we’ll house you. If you’re too poor to be sick, we’ll pay for your doctor. But all of that comes at a cost.

We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.

Poverty entails fear and stress and sometimes depression. It meets a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts that is something on which to pride yourself but poverty itself is romanticized by fools.

We must restore hope to young people, help the old, be open to the future, spread love. Be poor among the poor. We need to include the excluded and preach peace.

We can’t afford not to educate girls and give women the power and the access that they need.

I was born in a very poor family. I used to sell tea in a railway coach as a child. My mother used to wash utensils and do lowly household work in the houses of others to earn a livelihood. I have seen poverty very closely. I have lived in poverty. As a child, my entire childhood was steeped in poverty.

History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.

War is never a lasting solution for any problem.

Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?

An unjust peace is better than a just war.

Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.

A riot is the language of the unheard.

Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.

What is black empowerment when it seems to benefit not the vast majority but an elite that tends to be recycled?

War contains so much folly, as well as wickedness, that much is to be hoped from the progress of reason.

War is so complex; human nature is so complex. There’s no filmmaker who has ever figured it out perfectly.

In America today, we are nearer a final triumph over poverty than is any other land.

If physical death is the price that I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive.

War is not merely a political act but a real political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, a carrying out of the same by other means.

War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.

When we are sick, we want an uncommon doctor; when we have a construction job to do, we want an uncommon engineer, and when we are at war, we want an uncommon general. It is only when we get into politics that we are satisfied with the common man.

Capitalism knows only one color: that color is green; all else is necessarily subservient to it, hence, race, gender and ethnicity cannot be considered within it.

I grew up in the east side of Detroit in an area where there was very little, except for a lot of scarcity, poverty and hunger. I never woke up saying, ‚I’m an orphan again today, isn’t this terrible? Poor me.‘

When the war of the giants is over the wars of the pygmies will begin.

Nobody has ever convinced me that race is real.

Living on $6 a day means you have a refrigerator, a TV, a cell phone, your children can go to school. That’s not possible on $1 a day.

Yes, we’ve still got more work to do. More work to do for every American still in need of a good job or a raise, paid leave or a decent retirement; for every child who needs a sturdier ladder out of poverty or a world-class education; for everyone who has not yet felt the progress of these past seven and a half years.

The world at large is less inequitable today than at any time in history. Number of people in abject poverty, as a percentage, is at all-time low.

We will not be intimidated or pushed off the world stage by people who do not like what we stand for, and that is, freedom, democracy and the fight against disease, poverty and terrorism.

In war, events of importance are the result of trivial causes.

If you’re totally illiterate and living on one dollar a day, the benefits of globalization never come to you.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination – and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past – are real and must be addressed.

Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. I am not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace.

Everything in war is very simple. But the simplest thing is difficult.

This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room.

I was born during the war and grew up in a time of rationing. We didn’t have anything. It’s influenced the way I look at the world.

I worked my way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty.